The Myth of Getting Back to Normal

Life Adapts.

There is something people say when life changes: You'll get back to normal.

It sounds encouraging. It is usually meant to be encouraging. But what happens when getting back to normal isn't actually possible?

Before the wheelchair, as Cardi B would say, I was outside.

I enjoyed going places, being around people and celebrating. So naturally, there was an expectation that once I adjusted to life in a wheelchair, I would eventually get back to doing those things the way I always had.

But disability doesn't always work that way.

For quite some time, life in a wheelchair made my world much smaller. It wasn't necessarily because I no longer wanted to go anywhere. Sometimes, I simply couldn't get there.

Transportation can have you in a chokehold.

When you depend on transportation services, leaving your house can become something that requires planning, scheduling and hoping everything goes according to plan. Transportation may work reasonably well for getting to a doctor's appointment and back home, but trying to use that same system to have a social life can be an entirely different experience.

I've had dinners where the meal was finished, the celebration was over, and my guests were still sitting there with me an hour and a half later because my transportation hadn't arrived.

Experiences like that change you.

Eventually, you start asking yourself whether going somewhere is worth everything it takes to get there—and everything it might take to get back home.

That changes what celebration looks like.

Sometimes celebrating looks like ordering a pizza, staying home and watching a movie. Sometimes it is a long phone conversation or FaceTime with somebody you love. Sometimes it is joining a YouTube live and laughing with people you've never actually met in person.

And sometimes, yes, celebrating still means getting dressed, getting out and being outside.

The difference is that I no longer measure whether I am living my life by how closely it resembles the life I had before my wheelchair.

I think that's where the idea of a "new normal" sometimes gets it wrong.

We talk about adapting as though it means finding replacements for everything we used to do until life feels exactly like it did before. But adaptation isn't re-creation. It isn't rebuilding your old life piece by piece and calling it success when nobody can tell the difference.

Sometimes adaptation means accepting that something is different while refusing to believe that different automatically means less.

At the same time, we shouldn't pretend every change is a personal choice.

There are still barriers in society that keep wheelchair users and other disabled people indoors and out of sight. Transportation is one of them. Inaccessible buildings are another. So are cost, limited assistance, poor planning and countless little barriers that people who don't have to think about accessibility may never notice.

That's an important part of the conversation about finding a "new normal."

I can adapt my life.

I can change how I celebrate. I can find new ways to connect with people. I can build traditions that work for the life I have today.

But adaptation shouldn't require disabled people to quietly accept unnecessary isolation created by inaccessible systems.

Maybe the goal was never to get back to normal.

Maybe the goal is to build a life that works now.

My life doesn't look exactly like it did before my wheelchair. Some parts of it probably never will. Other parts are slowly opening back up as I've gained more independence and more options.

But I'm learning that a life doesn't have to look familiar to still be full.

Sometimes the celebration is outside.

Sometimes it's pizza and a movie at home.

Both count.

Until next time… keep adapting, keep living.